06 Oct Episode #292: Andrew Page, The Axle Workout, Co-Founder
Pete Moore: This is your host, Pete Moore. And I am pleased and humbled to announce the launch of my one and only book titled time to win again, 50 takeaways from playing and watching team sports to guarantee your business success. Those of you who know me personally, and anyone who’s listening to halo talks for any length of time, know that I am an avid sports fan and a big believer in the value of team sports. What I’ve seen over the past 25 years, helping businesses grow raising capital, being an entrepreneur myself in coaching and mentoring executives in the sector. It’s the lessons learned on the field perfectly apply to business entrepreneurs, executives, managers, you name it. Every company that’s a strong company has got a good team. So quick read. There’s also illustrations in there from our good friend, mark cruelty, free cartoons. You go to integrity, sq.com. Enter your email address, and we will send you information on the book and the entrepreneur wars survival kit as well. Be great. Take names go halo.
Pete Moore: This is Pete Moore on halo talks NYC at the pleasure of having native Virginian recently moved to Connecticut, wearing a headband that could turn into his own company. Andrew Page, the actual workout. Welcome to the show, buddy!
Andrew Page: Hey, thanks for having me.
Pete Moore: Awesome. So you know, you’ve been a successful entrepreneur, I’m sure. You know, you feel like there’s, there’s progress that happens, you know, in, in sequence, in the, you know, it’s a winding road. So once you give your background kind of how you decided that there was a product that could be improved how you convince yourself to go down that route and shout out to the doubters.
Andrew Page: Yeah, absolutely. As shout out to the doubters, ah, I’ve been a licensed personal trainer and performance goes since I was 19 years old. So this has been a, I guess that was my, my first job and first passion. And I was a, I did a work study program at the university of Virginia. Moved to New York shortly thereafter, started working with professional athletes on the strength and conditioning side of things. I worked heavy with NBA basketball players. You’re a league. Also have you with the hospital for special surgery there. Basically getting guys from the operating table back to the point where they could actually play pro basketball again. So I have a very long history with injury, recovery, injury prevention bio mechanics. I just have I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of really great sports science institutes, like EXOS, which is formerly athletes performance P three sports science down, Santa Barbara just you know, have visited and done mentorships and
Pete Moore: Marcus over there. Yep, yep,
Andrew Page: Yep. Yep. So they have a F a great facility I’ve been there quite a few times working with them, trying to, and also their facility in Atlanta at Emory, which is where you are, right? Yeah. So they have an affiliate partnership with Emory and another facility that’s in Atlanta working with the guys on the east coast part partnership with the Atlanta Hawks. So shout out to them. It’s a very cool, very cool facility that they have there, but in the process of doing that, I had an idea that we use the Olympic barbell so much, and it’s, you know, I’m always working with guys that are, you know, six, six and up where 45 pounds in seven feet long is not really that big for them. But when you put that in the hands of someone who had never lifted weights before, that becomes a different challenge.
Andrew Page: And the barbell is so important because it is a fixed apparatus and it provides more stability on like a dumbbell where you need to have independent control of either side unilaterally. You can exert force fixed force against the barbell. And that was a, we needed to, we saw an opportunity to create something that was much more practical for people who had never lifted before. So we I approached my friend and now it’s my business partner. And co-founder now the actual workout. We, we took an aluminum crossbar from a cable cross machine. And we ran a, went to went to a machine shop in Brooklyn. This is, I was living in New York. So we went over there, we ran a three eight inch piece of steel through it, ordered two BMX wheels, clean the wheels down
Pete Moore: The best bike wheels, you know growing up in the eighties and nineties, if you had a BMX, like you definitely had a date for the prom.
Andrew Page: Yeah. We did the axle. The axle wheel, you can see behind me is a little inspiration from a mag wheel. Except it’s an X instead of a five spoke. So but it’s say we took those. We, we put two pegs on the actual, the pegs that you stand on the BMX bike. We put the pegs on the end of it. And we made these contraptions called the axle. So, and it was, it was really cool. We started teaching a group fitness class that was in the early days of class fast. We were teaching on a rooftop in 14th street, 14th and sixth. So having a great summer we got we, we were audited by crunch at that point in time, crunch fitness, you came to take our class as well as our, who is now our manufacturer oversee and kind of the rest is history from there. I wouldn’t say the rest is history. I you’ve recently said on one of your, I, by the way, I’ve just been bingeing a little bit on the halo talks since my friend mentioned it to me. So and the quote was Richard Branson about everyday being a new day is a, is definitely relevant. Cause it’s not really like the rest of history. It’s like, we’re still, we’re still at war.
Pete Moore: I mean with you. Well, thanks for the binge on us, you know, and I’m glad you’re on. So, you know, as you took the first couple of steps into, you know, diagnose it okay, is there an opportunity and I’ve, I’ve got clients that, that there isn’t a product out there, you know, what, what then turns you into like, okay, I’m going to go and solve this versus all right. You know, let’s just kind of Jerry rig it. You know, I’m going to go and actually turn this into a company. What kind of, what was the turning point for you that said I’m building a business?